EVENTS

Question of the week: Will Jesus protect me?

It’s fascinating sometimes to dip into the real conversations that people are having, just to see what kind of world they live in. Ok, there’s an element of tabloidish voyeurism here, I admit it, but I can’t help taking a peek now and then. Here’s my pick for Question of the Week, from Yahoo! Answers.

Will Jesus protect me from the demons that desire me to sin?

The correct answer to that question should be pretty obvious, if boring. But how do Christians deal with Jesus’ consistent and universal failure to provide believers with protection from temptation?

One quick/pat answer is to blame the victim:

You desire you to sin.

It’s all your fault you’re tempted, you see, so therefore it’s not really Jesus’ fault he fails to show up to help you.

Another approach is to try and excuse Jesus by saying it’s all part of a wonderful plan.

no he cannot. All humans sin if we didn’t there would never have been a reason for Jesus. But he can offer you strength to try and limit the amount you sin and the depth of them.

This one is interesting because it suggests that somehow sin and evil are necessary in order to achieve a greater good. If we’d been perfect people, God would never have shared Jesus with us, because… um, well… um…

But probably the best answer is to throw a bunch of words at the question (caps lock key engaged) and try and bury it under a pile of piety.

JESUS WILL PROTECT YOU BUT YOU WILL STILL HAVE TEMTATIONS. If demonic activity is keeping you from reading the word or getting back to living without the sin that seperates you from God, then you have authority to cast demons out in Jesus name. I like to use his hebrew name if it is to cast out demons. His name is Yeshua messiah.

Read the whole thing if you have the time (and if that much of your life would be wasted anyway). The gist of it seems to be that it doesn’t matter how much you contradict yourself as long as you have strong feelings about what you’re saying, and as long as you can cut and paste from an online KJV bible.

Like I said, a bit tawdry and tabloidish, but somehow still fascinating, in the honest look it gives us at human foibles.

Well, the only way to find out is to try. Here’s what you do.
Jump into the path of a speeding bus. If Jesus ‘protects’ believers, you’ll be unharmed. Otherwise, have someone nearby to dial 911.
If you decide at the last second to chicken out, you have your answer. Which you already knew before you asked this bullshit question.

“…how do Christians deal with Jesus’ consistent and universal failure to provide believers with protection from temptation?”

It must be obvious by now to even the thickest follower of Yeshue-bar-yussef that Yeshue wants them to be tempted and to commit sins so that they can be saved from sin! If they don’t sin they cannot be saved. So sin away all you want – just repent in time! In fact I’d recommend repenting every week or so like catholics do; then you won’t get caught with an impossibly long backlog of repentance that you won’t have time to complete in the event you’re making a quick exit.

In any case, as Oscar said, “the only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it”.

Of course He’ll protect you! He’ll just do it invisibly, so you don’t even know it’s happening. He’ll also protect you against dragons, minotaurs, leprechauns, unicorns, faeries, owlbears, gelatinous cubes, and Bigfoot. But He’s behind the scenes protecting you against all that bad juju.

However, He will categorically not protect you against bullets, knives, vehicular accidents, fire, poison, electrocution, drowning, old age, falling, incurable disease, genetic predispositions to early mortality, or choking when trying to swallow your own Bible to bring the Word of God closer to your heart.

I mean, which of those is more likely to occur in real life? Just trust in the Lord, and send me the login details to your Paypal account. Bless you my child.

The point I made was that if Jesus was real you could ask him yourself. Since the question was asked of people rather than Jesus it clearly indicates that Jesus just isn’t there and certainly can’t help if he can’t answer simple questions.

Imagine how many billions of prayers for succour and protection have been offered to Jesus. Think of all the people stricken with terminal cancer, trapped in burning towers, caught in wartime crossfire or watching their loved ones in agony.

Think how it must have been for them to think, at the end: “Why didn’t he help me?”